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Our Stories of EVE bring you the wildest tales of EVE Online from the champions of New Eden that know them best.

In lieu of our usual monthly EVE Online interviews , we've got an extra special edition of our new micro-series "Stories of EVE" for you.

If you have an amazing tale from EVE Online, don't hesitate to get in touch and we much just feature you next! Few people know more about what's going on in EVE Online better than CCP Swift Peter Farrell , who has been playing EVE Online under the moniker Elise Randolph since almost the beginning of its 18-year-run. He recently shared some of his favourite EVE tales with us, so we thought we'd share them with you:

This is one of my favourite stories in EVE history. Because EVE is such a deep game, so much has happened. There are literal history books written about it – like Empires of EVE Vol 1 & Vol 2. But because the game is so longstanding, everything can feel like it's been done sometimes, then Katia Sae comes along and says, "By the way I'm the first person to go through every star system and I've got a picture in each of them. Oh, and I didn't die once!"

It just took EVE by storm. In EVE Online, you have these fearsome empire builders who go to war spending trillions of ISK. Then this pacifist cartographer comes along from a tiny Corp called the Signal Cartel, and he shows the entire world of EVE these achievements that have been years in the making. It just wowed everyone – opening up these whole new worlds of possibility.

So along comes this guy Henrique Arnolles, a great fellow whom I've had the pleasure of chatting with, and he says, 'I was inspired by Katia, but I want to do it faster and I also don't want to die'. So, he went out and did the remarkable. For context, I've been playing hard since 2004 and I looked up how many systems I've gone to, and it wasn't even half. And I've been all over the place! And along he comes, in under a year – just 224 days – without dying. It's incredible.

And now that people know this achievement is a thing, there's even more competition to beat it. Someone else tried recently and died. But the fact Henrique was able to do this is jaw-droppingly insane.

For context, EVE Online's space is divided into security levels:

In high security systems, it's pretty easy to do with no real danger of dying as the systems are connected by gates. If you had a frigate or another fast ship, and you were dedicated, you could go through it all in a few weekends.

In low security systems, anything can happen on the gates. There could be some guy waiting to kill you, there could be someone waiting to bait you, you just have no idea what's going to happen. Low security space is pretty dodgy and dangerous.

Then there's null sec space, the Badlands where players draw their own borders and do not take kindly to new people coming in. They are actively trying to hunt you down and kill you and they don't care if you're a pacifist or a cartographer. At times, Henrique was camped for hours in these little pockets and that's a staggering feat in and of itself.

Finally, there's wormhole space. The wormholes are pretty much randomly mapped with no gates connecting them. You have to probe down a wormhole which will take you to another wormhole, and those pathways change every few hours. The fact that he went to every single one of those and was even able to find all of them is absolutely nuts.

That he was able to do all of this in less than a year…well…I can't see this record getting beaten for a while. We work with Guinness World Records a lot and we're constantly beating our own records, but we said to them, "Don't worry, we're pretty sure this one is going to stand for a while. You can keep your certificate printing press off for the time being." We are, however, formalizing an authentication process so we can verify future attempts. Of which we know there will be plenty.

Another nice detail is that Henrique, the pilot who broke the record, is also in Signal Cartel. Signal Cartel are one of my favourite EVE Online groups because they're pacifist cartographers and they leave an indelible mark on the universe, the same way that the most vicious warlords do. Henrique and Katia are friends, and Katia helped him along the way. It wasn't cut-throat competitive, it was cooperative. Katia helped him shatter his own record. A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit."

Fun Fact: This conversation happened during one of our monthly EVE Online interviews. The story led to the suggestion of a real-life trophy and an in-game monument to the record breakers of past and future. You heard it here first!_

If you enjoyed this story of EVE Online, check out another one of Peter's tales in our previous iteration of Stories of EVE: "Snuffed Out". Plus, stay tuned for the next tale, a more intimate tale of ships and friendships, an unlikely companionship snatched from the jaws of danger – "Stories of EVE: Humans of New Eden".

Capsuleers, we'd love to hear from you!

Next month, the MMO Games team is heading to Iceland to cover the first EVE Online Fanfest since the start of the pandemic. We can't wait to meet EVE's most dedicated players and fans, and it's our mission to collect as many awesome Stories of EVE as we can from them while we're there. Still, if you're a lover of EVE Online and you think you have a story to tell, don't hesitate to reach out to us via social or via contact@mmogames.com.

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